Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

An interesting start gives way, as the book progresses, to an increasingly bizarre and hysterical insistence that the premise of the thing is relevant when it is clearly not. True, from late antiquity through the early modern era, central Asia, when not the heart, was at least the crossroads of the world, or at least the Eurasian world; the book suggests that the Americas outside of the United States and most of Africa have little relevance to mankind. However, in screaching to claim central Asia’s central place in the world, the author resorts to strange and deperate means. For one thing, his definition of central Asia eventaully stretches from well into China westwards well into North Africa. In the author’s view, Israel is of tertiary relevance to the modern history of the Middle East. The list of distortions and deceptions, most probably self deceptions built on a world perception distorted by the lens of the British Empire and modern academic faddihness, is too long and ridiculous to dwell on. Suffice it to say, a perspective on how the silk road and the territory surrounding it affected world culture is adventageous. However, it won’t be found here as the author passes from assertion to fantasy in making his case through the book, and the reader is left wanting.